


The Warmth of a Star

by Cerillen



Series: The Thing I Keep to Myself [1]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: But he has no idea what he's doing, Especially when I write about him, Gen, He still tries tho, Poor bean doesn't get enough, Roman wants to help, Virgil deserves all of the affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 14:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15820857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerillen/pseuds/Cerillen
Summary: Anxiety sometimes pushes himself a little too hard.Roman isn't sure how he'll do so, but he wants to help the other, regardless.





	The Warmth of a Star

Anxiety was usually a very calm and collected individual.

He was always ready to help when someone had a problem and rise up to the occasion when someone needed him.

He was the definition of a Knight, despite his dark and gloomy appearance, and it was rare for him to show any sort of weakness around the others.

But, it did still happen.

One such moment occurred on a lazy afternoon while Thomas, Patton, and Logan had been spending time with Thomas’ friends, leaving the other three sides behind to do as they pleased.

As such, Roman was calmly taking a walk through the Imagination Plane, simply looking at the scenery he’d idly created.

**_“ROMAN!”_ **

Until something rammed into him and sent him flying through the trees.

He landed gently enough in a cloud of pure shadow, but the shock of being slammed into left him silent and pliant as the thing that was now attached to him started to shake him violently by the shoulders.

The part of his brain that wasn’t quite as stunned and blank as the rest tried its best to understand the jumbled up rumble of sound that was being directed at him, but it continued to simply sound like nothing at all.

So, after a few more moments of being frantically shaken and rumbled at, Roman forced himself to come to his senses and grabbed at the thing’s arms.

The shaking stopped, Roman calmly shook his head, and then blinked in confusion at the…”thing” sitting on top of him.

His face scrunched up.

“What?”

The thing rumbled again in a slightly more whining sort of way and a very strange sort of ripple ran through it, violently enough that Roman could feel the movement through his own body where they were connected.

It was a shadow.

Much like the ones Anxiety sometimes summoned, it was a wriggling mass of pure darkness that was currently humanoid in shape as it held him with fingerless facsimiles of hands.

Unlike Anxiety’s shadows, this one had two glowing violet slits as a sort of strange interpretation of eyes.

And it’s voice sounded much louder and more disjointed than Anxiety’s shadows did.

In fact, it sounded closer to…

Roman blinked at the thing on his lap once more.

“Anxiety?”

It twitched, then sagged in seeming relief as it rumbled in a more soft and pleased sounding tone.

Roman’s jaw dropped.

It made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh and pushed his chin back up.

“Anxiety!”

The shadow let out another noise as Roman perked up and shouted.

“Oh my good graciousness! What happened?! Are you alright?! Is this normal?! What-mmf!”

A tendril of shadow gently covered his mouth and he blinked a couple of times in surprise as the shadow let out a rumbling huff.

Then the tendril moved away and Anxiety started to let out more rumbles that sounded both exasperated and slightly distressed.

Roman’s brow furrowed.

“Can you not talk right now?”

A positive sort of rumble and something similar to a nod was given in response.

“I see. I suppose I can’t really get any sort of explanation right now then, can I?”

A more negative sounding rumble and a shake.

“Right. Well, is there something I can do to help with this? I’m assuming there is, since you came here in the first place.”

The anxious side perked up a bit and nodded again with a pleased rumbling noise.

Then something kind of terrifying happened.

A sound, like a mix of screams and static, burst out of the shadow and Anxiety was suddenly shaking and convulsing violently away from him.

“Anxiety?!”

The shadowy side only seemed to get louder as he rolled and lurched across the ground a good distance away from Roman.

Unsure of what exactly he could do at this point, the creative side simply watched with some distress from the sidelines, hoping that whatever this was wouldn’t cause any serious harm to his darker counterpart.

After a few more terrifying moments of this, Anxiety finally seemed to calm and came to a still slump about ten feet away from Roman, letting out rumbling gasps of breathe as it he tried to recover from…whatever that had been.

Still incredibly unsure of what exactly he should do, Roman slowly approached the other side until he was crouched on the ground a couple feet away from him.

“Anxiety?”

A slightly more precise rumble and the eye slits moved across the shadowy blob until they were facing the other.

Despite being two rough slits of glowing violet light, they somehow looked tired.

“Are you alright?”

The rumble sounded almost sad this time and Roman did something without even really meaning to do it.

He reached out a hand and gently pet the top of the blob.

He almost instantly brought his hand back and away again when he realized what he was doing, but stopped himself when the shadow simply let out a pleased rumbling as it slumped a little further on the ground, it’s body seeming to relax from the gentle touch.

And a thought occurred to Roman then.

Perhaps this was something that simply happened to the other side sometimes.

And, perhaps, the other side usually dealt with it by himself, without having anyone there to help him get through it.

The thought made Roman’s heart clench a little as he continued to gently pet the shadowy blob limply laying in front of him.

“Anxiety?”

The shadow rumbled at him again and perked up a little to give him it’s attention.

“Is there something I can do to help you with this?”

The eye slits expanded a little, in a facsimile of a normal eye widening, and Anxiety simply sat in silence for a moment before the glow seemed to soften in a way and he let out a gentle sort of warbling noise.

Then the shadowy blob lurched forward and pushed against Roman.

He didn’t push back.

(Kasa-find/discover)

Instead, he let himself fall back onto the ground and made himself comfortable on his back as the shadowy side kind of oozed on top of him.

Despite how strange the entire thing was, Roman found the position to be surprising pleasant.

Anxiety’s shadow form was soft, despite it’s gooey appearance, it even felt a little like it had some kind of kitten soft fur on it.

And he was warm, and rested across Roman’s body like a very thick blanket.

In fact, the warmth made him instinctively make the area around them cooler.

He almost stopped himself once again but allowed it to happen when the shadow on top of him let out even more pleased rumbles as it relaxed further against him.

He was almost completely covered in shadow by then, and found that he didn’t really have as much of a problem with that as he maybe should be having.

Instead, he also relaxed, reaching a single hand out from under the solid liquid form of Anxiety to continue gently petting whatever part of the other he could reach.

The rumbles only grew louder and steadier until they seemed to shift into something similar to a cat’s purr.

And Roman laughed a little, letting out a yawn as he laid back and quietly watched the sky above him.

* * *

Roman woke up in his bed, feeling much colder than he had any right to be while resting beneath his sheets.

He glared at them silently for a moment, lamenting the fact that his much more comfortable shadow blanket had been replaced by a normal one.

Then he yawned and sat up, rubbing at his eyes.

After a few moments of slowly waking himself back up, he turned towards his door and blinked a few times in surprise when he saw something there.

It took him a moment of simply staring blankly at it, both from his bed and from right next to it, before his brain finally caught up to itself and realized what exactly it was he was staring at.

And, when it did, he found himself grinning wide enough to make his cheeks hurt.

* * *

When Roman entered the kitchen the next morning, Patton was the first to spot him and he was caught so off guard that he gasped right as he was taking a sip of coffee.

After a few moments of coughing and everyone asking him if he was okay, he finally gasped properly and started circling Roman excitedly.

“Oh my gosh, Roman! When did you make this?! It’s beautiful!”

Logan nodded in agreement and joined the other in examining the new article of clothing Roman had added to his usual princely ensemble.

“Indeed, it is quite an impressive design. And it doesn’t look like the usual sort of fabrics you use. What did you make it out of?”

And Roman grinned, just as much as he had when he’d found the beautiful scarf laying on the floor of his room.

“Oh, you know what they say.”

He brought a hand up, putting a finger over his lips.

“A Prince never tells his secrets.”

Patton giggled and Logan raised an eyebrow.

“I believe that saying is actually meant to refer to magicians, Roman.”

The creative side shrugged.

“Well, it still applies.”

Then he sauntered his way over to the kitchen, gently running his fingers over the impossibly soft material resting comfortably around his neck.

“Just consider it a gift I received for helping someone in their time of need.”

Logan let out a quiet huff as he returned to his seat, and Patton giggled some more as he followed Roman into the kitchen.

“Well, it’s always good to reward yourself when you’ve done a good job with something.”

He left with a gentle pat to the other’s shoulder, after refilling his coffee mug.

And Roman watched him go with a slightly sad look in his eyes.

His fingers fell into a familiar petting motion against the kitten soft material around his neck, tracing over the delicate star patterns made of softly glowing violet light that seemed to slowly move and shift all on its own.

It bothered him, just a little, not being able to tell the others where the scarf had actually come from.

But Anxiety had left that note for a reason.

And had been kind enough to make the scarf in the first place as a thank you.

So, as long as Anxiety wished it, he would take this secret to his grave.

And, Roman smiled a little and sent a look up towards the hall where a dark door nobody had ever seen open sat, maybe that would make Anxiety more willing to trust him in the future as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops.  
> I made a third series on accident.  
> Guess that eventual crossover is going to be even bigger than I originally expected...


End file.
